Loupe Neck Band

Dimensions: 5/8" wide by 17" long (including snap hook at end)

Completed: October 2015

I made this neckband as a present for an avid mineral collector, who loves to wander through the wilderness looking at specimens through a portable field loupe. The band ends in a snap hook to which he can attach the loupe.

I picture mineral collectors far and wide being jealous of the dashing figure he presents in the field with his custom-made strap, bedecked with the tools of his trade.
 

In general, it worked out pretty well. I ran into serious tension and tangling problems, which I solved by creating home-made weights for my warp threads (described in this earlier post). And the final assemblage was a little dicey, since I'm apparently not nearly as good at working my sewing machine as I am the loom. But I feel pretty proud of it, overall.



The Pattern

Cards set up on the loom

 

I used 10/2 pearl cotton yarn from Halcyon Yarns. The main color is Ruby (#1220) and the foreground designs are in Pistachio (#1880).


The pattern uses 22 four-hole cards. The 20 middle cards are for the design itself, while the outside-most two cards (cards 1 and 22) are for the selvedges.

The selvedges are done by constantly turning the cards forward one turn with each pick, no matter what is happening with the cards in the design section of the strap.

 

It's a pleasure to see your design
come into existence

I warped the loom with 88 warp ends 70" long. I figured that would result in a 52" strap plus 18" of loom waste, and that would give me plenty for me to experiment with and still end up with a band that was a total of 34" in diameter.

 

The warp ends for the outside selvedge cards 1 and 22 were all Ruby; all the other cards were warped so that holes A and B had Ruby threads in them and holes C and D had Pistachio threads.



I created the designs for the rock hammer, the shovel, and the wearer's initials myself using Guntram's Tablet Weaving Thingy. (I will forever thank you, Guntram, for creating your Thingy.) I designed each element separately and then combined them together into one template, making sure that there were the proper number of spaces between each design element so that the edges of the shovels and hammers weren't offset by one space got kinky.


My final design; click to enlarge

In some cases I couldn't get the elements to be spaced out evenly and not have them be offset by one or three spaces so the twining was wrong and the edges got kinky. So I borrowed one of Guntram's fancy knot patterns (interlace1.gtt) and interspersed it among my hammers and shovels to make the spacing work better. 



Blocking the strap

After that, it was just a matter of finishing up the weaving itself, blocking the strap, and then attaching the snap hook.

I used a 5/8" snap hook (or, to be specific, a "Metal Silvery 0.65" Inside Diameter D-ring Lobster Clasp Claw Swivel Eye Lobster Snap Clasp Hook for Strap."

Due to some mistakes in the execution of my original plan for attaching the snap hook, I ended up cutting the strap into two pieces, one about 4" long and the other about 30" long. I fed the hook through the shorter piece, and then sewed the two pieces together, end to end, with a lot of purple thread and using the buttonhole setting, so that the cut edges of my weaving wouldn't fray. 
 

The finished product

Close-up on the adequately-finished
snap-hook end





Fishing Sinkers & Film Cannisters: The Solution to Tablet Weaving Tension Problems

Several months ago, I began a project to make a thin tablet-woven strap that would serve as a neck band for a portable loupe.

After working about eight inches of the strap, I realized that I was running into severe trouble with the twisting and tangling of the warp threads.

I didn't run into this problem with my last tablet weaving project, because it was a symmetrical pattern. If your pattern has bilateral symmetry, you don't run into tangling and tension problems because you spin the cards one way for half the design, and then you spin the cards the opposite way for the other half, gradually un-doing all the twist you have put into the warp threads, and everything works out in the end.



But with an irregular double-faced pattern like the one I was using, the design is irregular. You twist cards this way and that to get the design you want, and you might never reverse some of them. The result is that the warp threads get progressively more and more tangled. And when some threads tangle one way, and other threads tangle another way, and others don't tangle at all, then they develop vastly different tensions, and you end up with some of your warp threads drooping way down while others are too taut.

All of this makes for a horrible-looking, raggedy and uneven weave, especially when it comes to your selvedges.

And my problems were exacerbated by the fact that I was using my rigid heddle loom to do my tablet weaving, when most normal people would just buy an inkle loom and that would probably be that.

After a great deal of Googling, I arrived at what turned out to be a great answer for me, which was suggested by a post on the Weaving Spirit blog. (Or actually it was suggested by a post on that blog plus some of the comments on that post.)



The cannisters deployed, with yarn ends
and fishing sinkers tucked inside

Instead of tying my warp threads to the back bar of my loom and winding them up and expecting them to stay constant, I used home-made weights to weigh down the warp threads and keep them evenly taut.



I got 11 empty plastic film canisters and 55 one-ounce fishing weights or "sinkers." Then, two by two, I took a pair of cards, untangled their warps, wound most of the unused portion of the warp threads into a butterfly, and then stuffed the butterfly plus five sinkers into a canister and fastened the top.

The result: much more even weave
and regular selvedges

This worked like a charm. It made the warp nice and taut evenly across the whole width of the strap. It was really easy to untangle the warp threads as they got tangled periodically, and just as easy to periodically let a little bit more yarn out of the cannisters when I needed to roll down my weaving. And my selvedges came out neater than ever.

Symmetry Op-Art Socks

Dimensions: Fits men's U.S. shoe sizes 9-10
Completed: July 2015

I made these socks using the pattern called "Symmetry" in Op-Art Socks by Stephanie van der Linden. This book is packed full of unique, colorful, and beautiful sock patterns, most of them based on the styles of various Op-Art artists like Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, and Josef Albers.

The finished socks

The pattern is written for Zitron Trekking Sport 4-ply yarn, but I couldn't find the colors they used anywhere online, so I used Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock hand-dyed yarn instead. Shepherd Sock has just about the same gauge and came in very similar colors to the ones used in the pattern.

I used (hand-dyed) in color 16ns (Charcoal) for the main black background and color 76 (Aslan) for the lighter variegated stripes. I knitted them on a US #1 needle.

I made one of the socks back in the winter of 2014-2015, and then put the project aside for months while working on other things; when I finished blocking the second sock in the summer of 2015, it was smaller than the first. I re-blocked it and tried to stretch it so it matched the first a little better, but this will forever be a lesson to me not to let my projects sit too long.

Made for a human...

 ...but cats like them too

Purchases from the 2015 Vermont Sheep & Woolcraft Fair

I got a big treat this month: on Saturday, October 3, I went up to Tunbridge, Vermont, to attend the 27th annual Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival.

The festival, which I'd gone to once before, has all the usual fun wool festival things like sheepdog herding demonstrations and small ruminant lectures, as well as pens full of sheep, cashmere & mohair goats, alpacas, angora rabbits, and llamas. And they have loads and loads of vendors of beautiful yarn.

Since everything at this festival is tempting, I decided this year to stay away from the roving and just look at the prepared yarn. And, in particular, yarn that was unique, created by hand by small farmers and artisans in small quantities. I especially love it when the vendors have spun wool from their own animals and can tell you the animals' names.
I came away with some great stuff. Here's what I bought:



Luigi's Locks from Yellow Dog Farm,
dyed an intense grassy green

A beautiful charcoal gray and pale green hand-spun mohair yarn, variegated in both texture and color, from Dillner Hillside Farm. Two of their cute tiny goats were in a pen right next to their vendor tent.

Green & gray hand-spun mohair
from the Dillner Hillside Farm, 
variegated in both color and texture

Five vegetable-dyed sampler yarns from Tidal Yarn that I plan to use to practice tapestry weaving. The owner of Tidal Yarn says she gets her yarn from small New England sheep farms and dyes much of it using plants she grows in her own garden.

A bouclé mohair yarn called "Luigi's Locks" from Yellow Dog Farm. The fleece was specifically from Luigi the Goat, whose picture graces the label of the yarn. It is a FANTASTIC color of grass green with little streaks of yellow that the owner said that she had just dyed that week specifically for the show.

A beautiful hand-spun combination of jewel-toned pink, burgundy, and lime green from Wiseacres Farm. The vendor said people did seem to like her "crazy mixes" (of which this was one).

I only wish I'd been able to have a little bit of everything. You can find a full vendor list here.


My haul from the 2015 VT Sheep & Wool Festival

Big E Natural Brown Alpaca Scarf

Dimensions: 5 1/4" wide by 70" long
Completed: December 2011

In the fall of 2011, I went to The Big E. (For the uninitiated and/or non-New-Englanders out there: The Big E is like a state fair, except that it includes all of the New England states.)

At the Big E, in the Mallary Complex, which is where all the sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, and other fleecy animals are housed, there is a small store called the Fiber Nook. There they demonstrate spinning and weaving, and they have yarns and hand-made woolen goods for sale.

There at the Fiber Nook I bought one skein of a soft, worsted-weight alpaca yarn. It looks like it's the natural shade of whatever alpaca it was taken from.

It knitted up quickly into this beautiful, soft, natural brown, k1p1 rib scarf.

I have no idea who produced the yarn, since I lost the label shortly after I made the scarf. I went back in subsequent years to see if the yarn would still be there, but so far it has not.

So this is truly a one-of-a-kind accessory.

Swatch Yarn Has Arrived and Now I Need to Buckle Down

I just received the Cascade 220 yarn I bought for my TKGA masters program swatches. Very exciting.

Now I just have to get up the courage to make the first one. Who knew a simple garter stitch swatch would be so scary? Especially when it's going to be in one of these silly Easter egg colors?

Ultra Alpaca Fisherman's Cap

Completed: 2013

Dimensions: 18" diameter

Several years ago I was all eager to make myself a brick red sweater. I bought a couple skeins of different alpaca yarns I thought were good colors, and I had all these grand plans to make a bunch of sample swatches in fancy cable patterns, and then the sweater itself.

Once I came to grips with the fact that I most likely was never actually going to make the sweater, I figured I should go ahead and use up the sample skeins in smaller projects. One of the skeins I had lying around was Berroco's Ultra Alpaca yarn in color #6280 Mahogany Mix. It is a really soft worsted weight alpaca and wool yarn, perfect for a non-itchy fisherman's hat.  

This one is knit on #5 needles, with a gauge of 23 stitches and 32 rows = 4".

The finished hat with more accurate color

Good stitch clarity but inaccurate color!